


Two Days

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Case Fic, First Time, Inspired by Fanfiction, Love and sex are separate, M/M, Remix, Slash, Was so inspired!, or are they?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:58:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1381594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's arrested and John must use "his own methods" to free him before his reputation is ruined. A present day, BBC-Sherlock remix of "Two Days," a Victorian, ACD-Sherlock Holmes story by tweedisgood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tweedisgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/gifts), [Cellar_Door](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cellar_Door/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Two Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/191990) by [tweedisgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/pseuds/tweedisgood). 



> I first heard "Two Days" by tweedisgood as a podfic read by Cellar_Door, sometime last year. It is one of my favourite Sherlock fics of all time--I have both read and listened to it multiple times--and I wanted to write an homage to it, but set in the universe of BBC Sherlock (I also used "my" Sherlock and John, as I've imagined them in all my own Sherlock fics). I remade her work with reverence and appreciation, though without permission, for which I grovel for forgiveness, in advance. I did preserve some of tweedisgood's best lines (such as the last one, which, every time I hear Cellar_Door read it, gives me a head-to-toe shiver), again, as an homage.
> 
> This is not an apology for the work, which I think is good at least partly because it was based on such excellent source material, but merely an apology for being presumptuous.
> 
> If you enjoy this story, please read the original "Two Days," and I, of course, highly recommend Cellar_Door's podfic, as well.

Something awful was going to happen. What sort of something, Sherlock wasn’t sure, couldn’t discern based on present data. He was edgy, hyperaware, easily distracted (even for him), and each moment of “nothing happening” seemed only to presage “something about to happen”—an endless inhalation, but the scream never came. An anonymous email, a vague promise of punishment, scolding Sherlock’s “impertinent interference,” was the only evidence. As soon as he’d read it, Sherlock had felt a familiar, radiant spike of unease deep in his gut: he was being made to dance, strings of razor-wire jerking him this way and that, while the puppetmaster remained just out of view, behind the proverbial curtain, and no matter how Sherlock yanked at it, the curtain refused—thus far—to fall and reveal the identity of his tormentor.

Late morning at Baker Street. Sherlock barefoot, half-dressed, hair mad from a few hours’ restless sleep. He stroked his phone’s screen to life and found a single text message: _TWO DAYS_. So the dance was soon ending. His enemy—whoever it was—had amused himself (herself?) fully, Sherlock struggling against the strings that dragged him in a mad whirl this way and that until he was near collapse. There was always, Sherlock supposed, Mycroft, but the very notion of running to his elder brother in his current situation felt sickeningly familiar—“Is there a bloodybones in your wardrobe, Sherlock? Is it very hungry for a fat little boy to eat? I know it must be.”—and he found he couldn’t bear it. He was light-headed from lack of sleep and too little food. His brain ached, where on any other case—one in which the client was anyone but himself—it would have been buzzing pleasantly, sending shivers down his spine as he worked the puzzle, clicked each new piece into place. Not so, now. The threat of the unknown was like a gathering fog, and each passing second seemed only to further obscure, rather than illuminate, clues he needed to save himself.

Two days could be—would have to be--enough time to find his way. He’d think harder, reach out to a chosen few associates for leads. First order of business though, was to arrange a façade that would masque his desperation long enough to reassure Mrs Hudson he was fine, fine, don’t worry about him a single minute; go visit your niece in Southend (would he also send his best wishes for the girl’s speedy recovery from whatever surgery it was Mrs Hudson had rambled on about? No. That wasn’t like him, even when he was wearing his Real Person disguise). And of course, there was that other pressing issue: A night, not a week ago—the same night Sherlock had received the first, anonymous threat in his email in-box—when he and John sat side by side on the sofa with Italian takeaway on the table in front of them, utter nonsense on the telly, two empty bottles of old-vine red providing a convenient excuse for an exchange of slurred whispers that hinted and implied but ultimately resulted only in retreat, John withdrawing his hand from low on Sherlock’s thigh (reluctantly? Sherlock couldn’t bring the image of John’s face at that moment into focus), each of them stumbling a bit on their way to their separate bedrooms.

John had not brought up any of it since, though Sherlock could sense something different about him, a broodiness not typical of steady, open-book John. Maybe John assumed he’d had second thoughts, and was giving him space. Second thoughts. That seemed to imply a first thought, though Sherlock could not recall having a single thought, first, second, or otherwise, with John’s fingertips brushing upward along his inseam.

The electric jolt of his own desire had unsettled Sherlock;  he could feel current jumping from one nerve ending to the next, from the spot just above his knee where John touched him, spreading upward and out, a tangled throb of sparking heat settling low in his gut. An unfamiliar sensation had swept over him in that moment: uncertainty. His brain sloshed uselessly in a pool of Italian wine; his heart, tremulous, felt suddenly too large to fit behind his breastbone. Sherlock had compartmentalized emotion so as not to interfere with the work, and sexual needs were easily addressed when all that was required to quell them was the aroma of mutual attraction, a few coded phrases, and fifteen minutes in the shadows. The heat he felt at John’s touch was one thing—surprising though it was, it was biological, readily dealt with—it was the other thing, the sudden flood of You Are Mine/I Am Yours, that had sent Sherlock into an absolute panic.

And so, as ever, he ran away from it, diverted all that electricity and brain-energy into the case. He avoided John and 221B altogether, his days spent in labs and libraries and places he should never have been allowed into under any circumstances (a Real Person disguise and a set of lock picks could take him nearly anywhere). By the time the requisite forty-eight hours had elapsed after receiving  the text message, Sherlock had closed down focus onto five possible—of those, only three likely—senders. Even still, he had nothing concrete enough to save him, nothing he could spoon-feed to the idiots at the Met.

The third day dawned tormentingly hot, and Sherlock lay on his bed, beside the open window, wishing for a breeze and gagging for a cigarette. The sound of a car door slamming just below drew his attention and when he looked out, Sherlock saw a young, uniformed policeman walking toward the door of 221B. The way the knocker fell against the door—stuttering, as if it had slipped from his sweating hand—suggested he was nervous; doubtless he had heard many a tale of the “consulting psychopath” from Sherlock’s detractors in the police force. Sherlock shouted down from the window--“Drew the short straw, I see.”--and the officer stepped back from the door and looked up. Sherlock recognized him, though he couldn’t remember from which case. PC Prentice—first name started with T or D—Welsh, four years with the Met, married, two children, the wife had been expecting a third when they’d last met, his back was bad.

They could have arrested him on any charge, Sherlock figured, hands cuffed in his lap in the back of the car on the way to the station. If one wanted to adhere strictly to letter and spirit of the law—which, it could be assumed, the police would—there were plenty of arrestable offenses he had actually committed. Some of those might have meant Prentice would have allowed Sherlock time to shower and shave (as it was, he was dressed in his least-good suit, which was still far too good for jail, and his second-least-good-shirt, as his least-good one had gotten too close to a Bunsen burner and been demoted to fibre analysis). Sherlock’s loud protests that Prentice’s superiors would eventually be shown up as, at best, gullible, or, at worst, on the take, were met with silent indifference. He noticed that Prentice wiped his hand on his sleeve after touching him. Regardless of the charge, though, it ended the same way: Sherlock’s beautifully polished Harris wingtips surrendered so he didn’t hang himself with the laces, and Sherlock pacing barefoot in front of a metal shelf and a plastic-wrapped foam pad two inches thick masquerading as a bed.

The summer heat was made worse by the lack of ventilation; a single window, too high to see out, even standing on the bed, magnified the sunlight. The walls were covered in slime-coated, once-white tile, stinking of at least three kinds of mould. The mattress, when Sherlock sat upon it, emitted puffs of air carrying odours of fear-sweat, oversweet fortified wine, stale vomit, and worse. Over it all, an inadequate haze of ammonia-based disinfectant. Sherlock accepted a little water when it was offered—the heat was oppressive—but refused what was meant to pass for food. He waited, marking time by the shadow of a tall office tower across the street making a slow slide across the floor. The sense of impending doom that had for the past week been an amorphous cloud all about him, distilled now into a single, fist-sized knot, low in Sherlock’s gut.

Two hours and twenty-six? no, twenty-seven minutes after the lock had been turned (remotely, electronically, jails without keys, what progress!), a rattling sound, the door-within-the-door swung open, and there staring through the pitted, scratched Perspex window was John, looking wan and worried. Sherlock willed him not to say anything foolish; dark blue uniforms lurked in the background, close enough to hear every word from his mouth.

John made all the appropriate noises, Are you all right? The counterman at Speedy’s said he’d seen you taken out in handcuffs. They wouldn’t tell me where they were holding you. I’m doing everything I can. But there was something in his tone, in the crease of his forehead, the unsteadiness of his gaze. . .Sherlock knew that in the back of John’s mind, he worried Sherlock was not, in fact, a victim of false accusations so much as a victim of his own carelessness. Sherlock could forgive John assuming he was sinking into dangerous, self-destructive habits (though, at least this time, he was not). He could forgive John assuming Sherlock did not feel safe confiding in him about those dark longings which could so easily derail him, were he to indulge them (though this assumption was also far from the correct one).

That John assumed Sherlock was, perhaps, not the man John had believed him to be. That was untenable.

 “They wouldn’t tell me a damned thing, Sherlock; just mumbling about how disappointing it is when someone you admire turns out to be awful and similar bullshit. Now tell me. Why are you here?”

Sherlock was meant to be publicly humiliated, that much was clear, but whoever had sent that email last week, that text day before last, could not have even imagined the humiliation Sherlock felt now, manifesting in the hot flush of his neck. John was surely not imagining the kind of crime Sherlock was accused of, probably imagined a trumped-up arrest for trespassing in one of those many places he should never be allowed into, or being caught in the act of picking a lock, or impersonating a police officer. Even with those mild possibilities in his mind, John was clearly already distraught. Sherlock would have to be the one to break to him the seriousness of the charge.

“The PC who arrested me was hesitant to say, and I wasn’t given time to read the arrest warrant, which ran at least twenty pages. After the Inspector here—Coulson: newly promoted, ambitious, really awful breath—realised that I could outlast and outwit him to the extent that questioning me was useless, he began to let slip some of the details, and eventually what I gleaned is that I am accused of soliciting sex for money--with a frequency that is either shocking or impressive, depending on one’s point of view—and that those whom I solicited were underage.”

_Sherlock, you won’t believe what I just saw. This guy’s yammering down his phone, not paying any attention to anything, and steps right out in front of a bus. He stepped back to the curb in the nick of time, but I swear there was this instant where he was absolutely frozen, and his face. . .I’ve seen exactly the same expression on a man’s face just after he’d been shot._

 “God.”

“More like a devil, but what’s more devilish than the average human being? One I’ve been trying to flush out for over a week. Now he—or she, but probably he—has sidelined me here so she—or he—can go on with the business of ruining my reputation by making my name synonymous with pederasty and sex trafficking. God knows what they’ll find on my computer when they take it, which I’m sure they will--or already have.”

“But that’s ridiculous! You don’t solicit prostitutes, let alone underage ones. Are they saying these kids named you? What prostitute would go to the police to tattle on a client, and risk getting themselves busted?”

_“Why didn’t you tell me? Couldn’t I have helped? Or do you really think I’m so completely useless?”_

Sherlock wondered why John persisted in asking pointless questions.

 “Homeless addicts, runaways, something like that. I’m sure they’d be happy to testify to just about anything, so long as my enemy has the means to pay to keep them and their council-flat teen-mother girlfriends in meth and basketball trainers for the rest of their petty lives. But,” Sherlock went on, already certain of John’s next argument, “should it come out that they might have been paid off, it’s countered with evidence of my having paid them in the first place, and of me using my internet-fame, and my lurid tales of the sorts of crimes teen boys find sexually arousing, to further persuade them. You may not go cheap, John, but others buy and sell themselves every day, and no one bats an eyelash.”

“But at a trial. . .oh, god, Sherlock, a trial. . .Look. At trial, who would believe the word of a couple of drugged-up, vagrant kids over your word? Your work is side-by-side with law enforcement. You save people like that, not exploit them.” John worked his thumb and index finger along the creases in his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut in distress.

“You sound like your blog. You make me into a hero, John, but anyone doing an internet-search of my name is more likely to read that I’m an autistic drug addict, a misanthropic recluse, a gay virgin, and a psychopath. They’d read about my penchant for bending the law when it suits me. . .the sheer volume of comments from disgruntled policemen I’ve annoyed or offended would crash any browser. And, probably most damning in my current predicament, they’d read about my homeless network, and how I regularly pay junkie runaways to do things for me, as a matter of course.” John’s pained expression made Sherlock look away. John needed to be reminded, though, that one man’s “eccentric genius” was another man’s “amoral pervert.” It only took a few hundred hits on a single internet message-board post to destroy a reputation, and no one was on so high a pedestal that he could not be taken down in a matter of days, or even hours.

“This is a power-play, John. The powerful define reality and the rest of us submit to it or are destroyed. Not just soliciting prostitutes—soliciting _underage_  prostitutes: a nice touch. Every member of the jury will think of their own child, potentially the object of a grown man’s sickening desire. And the Crown Advocate will help them project their disgust onto a convenient scapegoat, in this case, a posh weirdo who’s known to keep the company of homeless youths. Surely it will be pointed out that I’ve been to Japan, that my maternal grandmother might have been a spy--anything that makes me seem foreign--because what is strange is frightening. And if the powerful have perfected one trick, it is stoking and reinforcing fear. You can’t argue people out of their irrational fears.”

Sherlock’s knees went weak, suddenly, and he lurched away from the door, dropping to sit on the thin mattress. In his fervor to convince John of the direness of his situation, he’d accidentally allowed himself to look at it from the outside, and it unexpectedly sent him reeling.

“Tell me how to find him, whoever it is set this up,” John urged, ignoring the uniformed officer standing nearby, his voice full of outrage and bravado and terror, knowing equally both what he was capable of, and where he was lacking. “.  .and don’t tell me not to take my gun.”

Desperate times, desperate measures, or so it seemed.

“What, you’ll kill him? Then you’re in prison, too—and trust me, they will not bunk us up together—and I’ll have no one to visit me but Mrs Hudson, who’ll probably ask if it would kill me to tidy the place once in a while. Don’t be rash. Maybe a jury will be sensible, and see the whole thing is ridiculous nonsense.”

Sherlock recognized that his ability to see the bright side of situations was perhaps not his most sharply-honed skill.

John sighed bitterly. He knew—even if not as well as Sherlock, surely well enough--that people of good intentions could be swayed toward being “better safe than sorry” when words like _paedophilia_ started flying about the place. How many times had Sherlock cleared the name of someone who would otherwise have been convicted? Probably more often, even, than he’d delivered up (always correctly) a guilty party.

“Maybe. . .could you make a deal with the guy somehow? I mean, if you knew who it was?”

Sherlock laughed. “You remember the case last fall, the man convicted of embezzling from the homeless shelter? And the Reverend Hall, who went up on fraud charges related to that military families’ relief fund, back in March?”

“Human garbage, both of them. But what do they have to do with--?”

“Innocent, along with at least a dozen others over the past two years: falsely accused, yet soundly convicted. I started to see a pattern, and I’ve been trying to determine and expose whoever’s behind it. Whoever it is, they’re well-connected, flush with cash, and determined to the point of obsession. You might as well try to make a deal with an oncoming train.”

Sherlock had been imprisoned by the influence of that same unseen hand, he was sure. A more corporeal hand—that of the uniformed guard standing not far off in the corridor—now landed on John’s shoulder and told him it was time to go. For whatever good it might do:

 “If my laptop’s still in the flat, look for my notes on the Hall trial, and see what you can do.”

Another two days, maybe less, and Sherlock would come up for indictment. More than enough time for the name _Sherlock Holmes_ to be made a new synonym for _lowlife_. Far too much time for Sherlock to be locked in a box thinking about the very real possibility he could be convicted, imprisoned—he could tick off a mental list of over a dozen judges who routinely imposed the most extreme sentences allowable in any crime against minors. Without his violin. Without a nicotine patch to clear his head and make his blood rush. Without a thing worth eating. Certainly without a single tolerable companion with whom to converse. Without a companion of any sort, should he be put in solitary confinement. And forever without a single, beautiful puzzle of a case to break the endless, everyday tedium. There would be only these grimy tiles, this sad excuse for a bed, this repulsive metal toilet that was also a sink. Nothing, nothing, nothing but his own mind swallowing itself down and vomiting itself back up, in the middle of all this endless nothing, until it was utterly destroyed.

Sherlock pushed the thought away.

John. The kind doctor, brave soldier, would (if the laptop hadn’t been confiscated) go doggedly at Sherlock’s notes, draw all the wrong conclusions, chase down leads Sherlock had already discovered to be dead ends, curse out loud at himself (and probably, if one were being honest, at Sherlock as well) for not being able to figure out where Sherlock had been going with all this. Almost inevitably he would notice staring eyes, hear murmured conjectures about how he “should have known” what Sherlock “really was” everywhere he went. With luck, he might avoid being associated with Sherlock’s “crime.” Sherlock imagined John’s open, ever-changing face, the loud whisper of his voice, and how he would surely visit when he could, but how, undoubtedly, the golden knot of their friendship would weaken and wear away until it was threadbare.

Sherlock pushed the thought away.

Time to focus. Deductions.

But there was nothing to work with. Sherlock had already pondered who could possibly benefit from the ruin of a gaggle of strangers. Nothing connected them: they weren’t related to any single family or entity, they had no real influence to speak of, and there was no evidence of some clandestine collaboration among them. The only thing the victims (including Sherlock) shared was that they had elevated reputations which could be brought low.

All crimes spring from but a few motives, and Sherlock had already eliminated most of them. Money was always a fairly sure bet, but this man—or woman—clearly had money, or could easily obtain it. Sex, of course. Nothing about the cases—despite the nature of the charges against Sherlock—suggested sex was behind it. Revenge seemed similarly unlikely, as to have such wildly disparate grudges against so many kinds of people would really only be possible if one were delusional. None of these motives fit, so Sherlock circled back to an out-of-balance need to exert power: destruction for destruction’s sake alone.

This man—probably a man, Sherlock finally decided, given the motive—must be simply boiling over with resentment, so full of spite one might smell it seeping from his pores. The three most likely culprits Sherlock had noted all wore a thin, shiny skin of respectability, but one of them was rotten to the core, and had been rotten for ages. Followers of John’s blog probably assumed that all Sherlock’s deductions were served up like a gourmet meal, that he folded together ingredients from a recipe made up of three parts client input, two parts internet research, a teaspoon of running foggy London streets at night, a final dash of back-of-mind trivia and— _voila!_ —the metal cloche lifts and the dish is revealed. Such simplification kept readers from clicking away to some other webpage. Reality, though, was a slog through waist-deep mud for a mile before it became clear one had been going in the wrong direction, and had to turn back. Since the Hall trial in March, Sherlock had spent every spare moment chasing rumours of the checquered pasts of anyone who might be smart enough, rich enough, and well-connected enough to bend the Met and the Court away from Justice, into the service of Power: news-site archives, image searches, internet message boards and chatrooms, victims of nonviolent crime, former white-collar criminals now repentant enough to open up about past misdeeds.

Criminals being creatures of habit, in their lives as well as in their crimes, nothing was ever really new. Sherlock figured he might detect a pattern of frame-ups, first for minor crimes, then escalating as the culprit became more sure of himself and craved an increasingly larger payoff. Sherlock slogged endlessly through mind-numbing “remember-whens” of school days, oversharing blogs and social media comment-strings rehashing old slights, reading until even with his eyes closed all he saw was eleven-point Tahoma. With mind-deadening slowness, though, there eventually did emerge from this tangled mess three distinct threads. Sherlock was sure that with his laptop, phone, and a few words in the right ears—in short, if he were _out_ \--he would surely be able to follow them all to the single source. _He_ would be able, that is, but. . .

“I am so sorry, Sherlock. I’m still stuck at square one on figuring out which of these three is your man.”

It was late; Sherlock was the last of the prisoners allowed access to the telephone. The guard had had to instruct him on how to make a collect call. Sherlock didn’t doubt that John had been working tirelessly, endlessly, trying to find a way to spring him, but the gut-jolting slam of electronic locks one after the next and the barked orders of the guards were as plain to hear as was the chagrin in John’s voice—not because he had failed to meet Sherlock’s expectations of him, but because he had met them. Sherlock wouldn’t bother with disingenuous consolation—“you did your best”—participation ribbons were woefully insufficient given the punishment for losing.

“Will I see you at the Magistrates’ on Monday?”

John huffed out a breath that could have been a sob, cleared a lump from his throat. So stubborn. So brave.

 “It’s _not_ going to get that far. Tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow, Sherlock. Try to get some sleep—and _eat something_ , would you. You’re headed for a faint.”

 “If the Inspector’s halitosis didn’t cause me to, nothing will. I’ll be all right.”

Sherlock spent the rest of the night doing the maths to tally the total number of wall tiles, the ratio of original ones to those that had been replaced, determined that at least four kinds of grout had been used between them, identified the three moulds he smelled upon entering as well as two more which were visible only when he lay on the stinking mattress facing the wall only inches from his face, then worked similar figures on the floor tiles, of which there were far more, adding a category for chipped tiles, and one for missing tiles, and one for tiles with unidentifiable substances adhering to them, and sixty-four for tiles with identifiable substances adhering to them (nine of them Biological: Human; thirteen Biological: Other; thirty-six of them Food; the rest Miscelleny), then he calculated the cost to each citizen of Westminster of keeping him, based upon the price of the replaced tiles, the ammonia-based antiseptic, the salaries of the police officers and guards, the cleaner, the food, the utilities, and imagined he might actually be so hungry as to have to eat something, as John had suggested, but quickly quelched whatever appetite he might have had with thoughts of what they’d tried to feed him earlier, then noticed that there was a worn spot on the metal near the lock as if some fool had thought he could saw his way out, with what?, his teeth?, and there was just enough light for him to identify the spider in the corner working away as _Tegenaria gigantea_ , and he longed for a cigarette—for a hundred cigarettes—and for the weight of his violin on his collarbone and the insect-like buzzing of his phone with its promise of something interesting to come and for the overwhelm of a rush of opiates and the smell of the disinfectant was sickening and why could John not see which one of them, he was always lingering on the surface of everything when connections were made far below, one must dive in, use disguises, dirty tricks, good old-fashioned lies, and for the first time Sherlock could remember, he longed to fall asleep.

 _Dawn_ : All data culled, Sherlock determined that his longing of the night before had, in fact, been in vain.

 _Morning_ : Cold shower, disposable razor, no mirror. Four stinging, bleeding gashes on cheeks, one on jaw, one on neck.

 _Noon_ : Hungry, but not hungry enough to eat whatever slop that was they shoved through the slit in the door.

 _Afternoon_ : The captive soul’s wants are few. A cigarette, more cigarettes, all the cigarettes, and for the love of all that is holy, a fresh shirt.

 _Evening_ : just as the sliver of sunlight on the floor was narrowing to nothing, John’s face appeared again in the Perspex window, wearing a triumphant smile (though his hands did not stop trembling until Sherlock reached for and enveloped them in his own, once they were safe in a cab and halfway back to 221B). Close behind John came a shuffling sergeant. Harrumphing nervously and pronouncing Sherlock “free to go,” he explained that the witnesses had used fake names to sign their statements and now couldn’t be located, that Sherlock must recognize the coppers were only doing their job by following up on the witness statements, and that it was going to be hushed up and if it got out to the press, heads would definitely roll. Ten minutes later, they were on the pavement, Sherlock blinking, John waving both arms wildly—as if he needed rescuing--to signal a cab.

Sherlock had thought of recommending John leave a prescription for medicinal mouthwash on Inspector Coulson’s desk, but then reckoned it would have meant John giving away his medical knowledge for free, and those bill things never stopped coming through the mail slot.

Up the stairs to the flat, doors shut and locked, and Sherlock allowed John to wrap him up in his arms—in fact, hugged him back. It was not a passionate embrace, by any means, but brimming with emotion; Sherlock noted it was the first time they had ever put their arms around each other. This, before John would give him a single clue as to how he’d managed to free him, and even after they’d stood embracing in the living room for a long minute, all John would say was that after getting nowhere trying to use Sherlock’s methods, he’d had to employ his own.

 “ _Your_ methods? No offence, John, but as far as I can tell, you have no methods.”

John snorted; it was the kind of thing he’d expect Sherlock to say, and so all was right in the world of 221B.

“First, a shower; next, food; and then, my friend, the great Sherlock Holmes will come down a peg.”

“Don’t be smug, John, it doesn’t suit you. I’ll forgive it because you’ve just saved me from Hell. But I want to know how. Immediately.”

But John insisted on keeping mum until after he’d fed Sherlock a sandwich made from some leftover pot roast Mrs Hudson had left them before she’d gone to visit her niece, three cups of tea, and a generous pour of Macallen. By then it was nearly midnight, and the moon was just visible through the slit in the drapes—Sherlock would not let John close them fully—both of them dressed for bed, pyjama bottoms, t-shirts, bare toes, side by side on the sofa as they went pleasantly soft around the edges from the whisky. In its way it was like so many other nights before, this night when everything was different.

 “After we talked last night,” John finally began, and Sherlock slumped slightly back, silent and attentive. “I fully admit I had no idea what to do. I was up all night thinking about it. So then this morning I went out for coffee and a paper—figured the walk and the air might shake something loose in my head--and in the coffee shop I ran into this doctor I knew slightly, in the army, Thom Grey. He’s just moved to London, apparently.

 “We caught up a bit, just the basics, took a table together out on the pavement under the awning. In the course of our conversation, he complains that he’s seeing a patient whose symptoms have him stumped, and that this patient is the sort who expects—though not necessarily deserves—white glove treatment, and that the patient’s good word in certain circles could grease the gears a bit, make it easier for Grey to move in some social circles he has aspirations to. He described the symptoms and it reminded me of something I’d read once, so as I’m trying to think of the paper’s author, or what journal I’d seen it in, Grey lets fly the patient’s name—and I recognized it as one of the three names in your notes. Christ, I had it in an email to myself, in the phone in my pocket at that same minute we were sitting there talking.

“Here I’d come up with nothing, even with all your notes, and something like 16 hours of brainstorming, and by pure chance I run into a guy I haven’t seen in ten years or more, who reminds me of a journal article I read sometime last year. I made an excuse to Grey, we exchanged contact information and that, and I came back here to Baker Street as quick as I could, to start combing through every online medical journal I could think of, searching the archives, and suddenly, there it was, just as I’d remembered—some American researchers tracking a rare, hereditary spinal cord deformity. They’d proven, among other things,  that this particular lesion was genetic, and must be inherited from at least one parent. And if this patient is our man, and is _illegitimate_ , well, that might explain the irrational hatred against people with good standing. And if this was indeed our man then if I could confront him with this evidence, I could back him off, and you’d be cleared. I don’t mind telling you, Sherlock, I was practically giddy.”

Sherlock didn’t doubt he would be; he’d reasoned the whole thing beautifully. Sherlock found himself so grateful for it, he forgot to be surprised, but no matter—John looked surprised enough for both of them.

 “But the only way I could find out if I was right was to meet the patient, so I had Grey forward him an email from me, offering a revolutionary new treatment, really puffed it up, made it sound very cutting edge, experimental, and if I’d read it myself I’d have thought, ‘this guy is clearly a quack,’—but obviously, at this point extravagant, engrossing prose is sort of my wheelhouse. I claimed to be flying to the Middle East directly, and that I could only see him that very day, and no later. And then I waited roughly ten million torturous hours for a response.”

Extravagant prose, Sherlock thought. Fiction. _The written word is a lie_ , who’d said that? No matter. John would have had a much harder time lying in person, but in writing. . . Well. On his blog, he’d essentially made a fiction of Sherlock’s life—of their life together, their _adventures_ —and it had benefited Sherlock in the past. No wonder John thought to try to help him with his extravagant (‘engrossing?’ Sherlock would come back to that) fiction, once again.

 “He took the bait and agreed to meet with me at Grey’s office. I went through the motions of gathering his health and family history, and once he assured me both his parents were alive, getting well on in years, and in good health, well. I had him, didn’t I? With that family name—that father, the things he’s said publicly that probably only hint at what he’s really about—I knew if our man was found out to be illegitimate, he’d be cut off, certainly wouldn’t inherit those telecomm companies, or that airline, or a penny of the money. He’d be scuttled out of high society, too. A few tips to the right journalists, a rumour floated at certain clubs, and this man would be ruined in a day—two at most. I laid this all out for his consideration. Then I told him who I was, and what he would have to do.”

Sherlock smirked. “But, Dr Watson,” he ventured slyly, “Wouldn’t it be a gross violation of your oath to be feeding tips to journalists, floating rumours in society meeting places?”

John nodded, shrugged, as if it were not relevant. The fiction of his blog posts were one thing—in the haze of admiration for Sherlock John had clearly given himself permission to embellish the truth, almost from the start. And some combination of loyalty and his natural—if self-destructive--inclination toward putting himself in harm’s way had meant he’d now and then bent the law to reach an ultimately justified conclusion.  But Sherlock wasn’t sure he wanted freedom or. . .or affection, as a byproduct of John’s having to set aside his principles; John was the moral one, the upstanding one.

John hummed agreement. “ ‘All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.’ It doesn’t say a damned thing about those things which actually _should_ be spread abroad, as I pointed out to the bastard himself. His days as a frame-up artist are over.”

Sherlock’s eyes had fallen closed though it was clear he was far from sleep. John shifted slightly closer to him, lay a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. After a moment, Sherlock covered John’s hand with his own. He looked up, then, into John’s honest, night-blue eyes; they sparkled, and John’s smile was self-satisfied, bordering on victorious.

 “I can manage a bluff when I need to, Sherlock, put on the poker face when the stakes are high. And the stakes couldn’t possibly have been higher. Fortunately, he didn’t call it; since he himself would have been willing to do exactly what I was threatening, he didn’t question whether I’m really the criminal type.”

All at once, they were both laughing out loud at the idea of John as the mastermind and executor of a blackmail scheme, raucous laughter, probably overloud because it was tinged with still-lingering nerves. When the laughter subsided, John wiped his eyes with the back of one hand, his other hand still under Sherlock’s, only the thin cotton of Sherlock’s t-shirt between his fingers and the bare skin of Sherlock’s shoulder, and their faces drifted nearer each other. John’s jaw brushed against Sherlock’s temple. Sherlock turned his head and stared at John’s mouth, softened with relief and laughter, and (probably) warm and tasting of caramel and smoke from the whisky, the way Sherlock’s own mouth still tasted.

Sherlock began to bounce one knee in a quick nervous jitter.

Abruptly, John straightened up and leaned away, a swipe of his hand across his face washing away the laughter, replacing it with a pinched seriousness.

 “Sherlock. We can’t. Not now, after all this. Those things we said the other night—we were drunk, it was strange, god it feels so long ago—consider them deleted. It’s just. It feels _unsafe_.”

 _All our time together up to this point having been completely dedicated to safety_ , Sherlock thought bitterly, and bit his lip. In some way, though, it had been: safe silence, words perhaps thought or dreamt but never, ever spoken aloud. Safety was an easy choice, but was ultimately overrated.

 “Not entirely safe, no; but neither is crossing the street, yet you do that every day, John, with just a quick glance in each direction. Really, to act on those words we whispered, to continue where your hand left off the other night, is in fact no more or less dangerous than anything we do together. Anyway, it was _your_ hand on _my_ thigh, I’ll remind you.”

 “And you hesitated. This isn’t one bit like crossing the street, Sherlock. I don’t do this every day.”

 “Well, neither do I. It’s been a very long time since last I stepped off that particular pavement. Unless I’m wrong—and since it’s my job not to be wrong, that’s rare—you _never_ have.”

John picked up the glass of whisky off the coffee table, drained it, looked over the rim as if gazing into the past.

 “Not never. When I was at school. In my last year. I was something of the big man around campus, I suppose, though not the biggest. Smart, but not one of the brains. Kept in line to impress the teachers but broke enough rules to impress the other boys. Played a bit of rugby, wasn’t awful at it. Loads of mates. And there was this one fella, in particular, a year younger than me. William. Will. We spent a lot of time together alone, first just talking; then it was more than talking. He stayed with us during one of the school holidays and. . .well, it felt like we were a proper couple, perfectly at ease together whether at the dinner table or under the duvet. It was impossible to be obvious about it at school, of course. Remember this was during the height of the AIDS crisis and while there were some enlightened kids forming gay-straight alliance groups, and among the art-y crowd declaring yourself bisexual was quite the in thing, it was still Thatcher’s England, and we were just kids. We weren’t that brave, back then. Anyway, I was in my last year, and Will had another yet to go.”

 “And so?”

 “I threw myself into my studies, and then the army. Dated loads of women, not because I felt I had to--I love women. It just never happened like that again for me, what happened with Will. Well. Not _never_ again.” He looked meaningfully at Sherlock, then looked back at the empty glass in his hand. “Anyway, I know who I am. And don’t spare a worry for ol’ Will, neither. Last I heard, he was a big shot solicitor in Birmingham with a wife a bit too young for him and a baby on the way.”

John made a gesture that swept this present image of Birmingham Will and his pregnant trophy wife out of the present and safely back into the past, and even locked the door behind them. Since it seemed to be time for a tell-all, Sherlock readied himself for a confession, hoping it wouldn’t result in a penance of chastity.

 “My father would be gratified to hear your story. He called public schools a ‘hotbed of vice’ and Mycroft and I were forbidden to go. Although I’m sure I would have hated it: all the enforced chumminess. Cambridge was bad enough, people always trying to “draw me out,” inviting me to their tedious parties. As if my own company was insufficient.”

 “You might have found your own hotbed of vice, had you gone to more parties. You told me, though, about that bloke—the boxer. You and he were lovers.”

Sherlock huffed out a bitter laugh. His northern hard man would have laid John out with one roundhouse to the side of the head, were he alive to hear himself called any man’s “lover.”

 “I hate to disappoint you, John, but I have never had ‘lovers,’ if the implication is that sex and love are inevitably intertwined. A great deal of my social life, before you and I met, revolved around my drugs habit, and the people I met in that circle were mostly fey partyboys. I was—I am—attracted to _men_. So I made an art of loitering in the dark hallways of shooting galleries, and—yes—the alley behind the boxing club. I’ve never tangled up emotion with sex, and so I’ve never felt the need to wake up beside anyone, once everyone had got off. And now I’ve shocked you.”

 “No, I’m not shocked. . .it’s no wonder you’re not worried that adding sex into the mix might complicate things between us. Have you had. . .have there been very many, then?”

The notable increase in “harrumphs” that accompanied this assertion of how not-shocked John was gave him away. He clearly was at least a little bit shocked, might even have found the idea of Sherlock’s casual promiscuity distasteful (though that particular judgment clearly warranted an immediate reminder of ‘Doctor, heal thyself’). Or perhaps he was merely feeling newly hesitant, outclassed, a new recruit for the first time taking aim, side-by-side with a seasoned marksman. Or, then again, below it all perhaps he was simply aroused by the idea of a younger Sherlock, gaunt and pale and vulnerable, a bit of opiate-addled rough trade lingering outside the door of the local, waiting for the lads to pour out onto the pavement after the football match ended. It could be John wished to hear the details. Sherlock shrugged.

 “I wouldn’t know how many comprise ‘very many,’ but the boxer I told you about was hardly the only one. There are significant limits, though, to what can happen standing up and almost fully clothed. It became boring because it was always the same. Soon enough my only passion was for speedballs. And then, later, my work.” Sherlock’s face changed; he was about to pose the final challenge. “John, I have no intention to sit here and talk you off. So. It’s getting late. Do you want me, or not?”

 “I do. You know I do. But—“

Sherlock scoffed. “Our partnership—friendship—is solid, and separate. We both like having sex with men; we’d like to have sex together. We’re alone in the house; it’s a perfect opportunity. They should make a new law against pussyfooting, John, just for you.”

John bristled, and Sherlock could see him make up his mind in an instant. John stood, grabbed Sherlock’s hand, and pulled him to his feet. He tugged the drapes fully shut and clicked off the nearby reading lamp, leaving the room much dimmer. “Come on then, Sherlock Holmes. Show me what you know.”

Sherlock turned John roughly so his back was pressed to Sherlock’s front (thin cotton pyjama bottoms making it impossible to hide that they both found this instantly arousing), held him with hands on John’s waist and hip, hustled him across the room, and began to speak in his practiced, expository tone.

 “We’re both underdressed for a true re-enactment, but use your imagination. We’ve established an attraction with furtive looks and coded phrases. A little money or a cellophane packet may have changed hands, merely as a favour of course: I am _not_ a whore. Next, find a secluded spot—ah, just over here, at the bookcase, brace yourself against it, both hands please. I’ll take care of everything: open your trousers, or as here, your pyjamas and take hold, like so. . .”

John let fly a string of soldierly curses, as soon as Sherlock touched him. And when at the same time as stroking him, Sherlock focused his attention ever more sharply by virtue of a hand kneading his arse, his balls, or the back of his thigh, John let go a surprising flood of endearments: “oh, you fucking angel,” he gasped, and then: “oh, my gorgeous boy.”

All too soon, John was finished, and seemed embarrassed by the quickness of the encounter, but Sherlock hushed him, even as his own prick thrummed and ached against John’s bent back. Sherlock  suggested John return the favour, but in a manner to which he was more likely accustomed: they could go to Sherlock’s bed together. Despite Sherlock’s earlier assertion that sex between them was separate from—and could not change—their bond, he found himself mildly worried that it might, indeed complicate things. He wondered if it were possible for them to be, as John had put it, prefectly at ease at the dinner table as well as under the duvet. And so he’d get under a duvet with John, possibly even linger there long enough to wake up beside him, just to see how it felt.

To Sherlock’s way of thinking, sex--regardless of who the partners were--was principally down to muscles contracting, nerves communicating and processing sensation, movement and friction. Surely it didn’t warrant smothering in mysticism and sentimentality. Sherlock thought John seemed oddly bashful, once they were lying naked together—just under a sheet, as it was far too hot for an actual duvet—and to his own surprise, Sherlock felt similarly unsure, a mixed sense of awe, curiosity, and anticipation touched with just a bit of fear. It was a feeling not unlike what he felt approaching a crime scene. Emotion--that Pandora’s box of potential bruises and constant distraction which John seemed so at ease with, in his blog writing as well as his day-to-day movement in the world, and which Sherlock was so often accused of being divorced from--was not completely foreign, but Sherlock had come to view Emotion as a dangerous indulgence, a potential mess, and so had long ago put it away for the greater good and the sake of the Work. But there in his bed, under the sheet, a spreading serenity covered and filled him, blew away the lingering ghost of his former sense of imminent disaster. With John’s arms wrapped around him, Sherlock felt safe. Warm, and not uncomfortably so. And then John was kissing him in a way Sherlock had never been kissed, because John loved him in a way Sherlock had never been loved, and it was as hot and sweet as he’d only a few times—in moments of slipping resolve--dared to imagine it might be. His brain dulled and drifted, but his heart was on fire with _Oh precious please more and there and there and, oh yes, there too and lower, and then lower: kiss me until you have kissed me absolutely everywhere; don’t stop, never stop, and never leave me, because of anyone who has ever touched me you are the only,_ only _one whom I have ever, ever loved. . ._

It was possible to keep completely separate their bond of friendship, their partnership, their day-to-day tea drinking and toast eating and arguing over who would do the hoovering (John, always) from this purely physical process of touching, tasting, coming undone. _A vision behind Sherlock’s closed eyes, as if a dream: John’s clever, cunning tongue a steel, sharpening the knife’s edge of Pleasure itself, then a surgically perfect incision, exquisite pain, aroma of salt and metal,  and a release of heat—here an electric tingle of synapses firing, here a tiny patch of shivering skin. Sherlock murmured nonsense, hardly heard his own voice over the rushing sound in his head, a cascade, a hurricane, a flock of birds arising as one._ The two did not have to be separate, though, Sherlock realised: It had never been less than this, since the first day they’d met, though until now--this minute, in the dark--there had been an ellipsis. Sherlock and John were an unfinished thought, and only now—this minute, in the dark--was the ending at last being uttered. John looked up, a self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips, then bent again to his ministrations, and in every physical sensation Sherlock felt an exquisite sadness, a transcendent joy, and he wanted to shout, wanted to die, here beneath John’s strong hands, and all at once he was, he was, _he was_ ; shouting, dying on the gasping breath of his name, sweet man and all the stars sparkling in his night-sky eyes, _John_.

Two days were spent lazing together this way, this _new_ way, that was not new at all, not really, merely the ending of an unfinished thought. Two days that would, naturally, roll on into two hundred days, two thousand, however many they had, Sherlock and John, who had been one from the day they’d met.

And the Work would go on, of course. Sherlock, always so easily able to bring separate elements into harmony, to complete every unfinished thought. . .or so John’s blog would have it. Even if it was, in the end, mostly fiction.

 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

> "'The written word is a lie,' Who'd said that?" Why, it was Johnny Rotten/John Lydon what said it! In Public Image, Ltd's song "Rise."
> 
> The "northern hard man"/"boxer" who was Sherlock's lover is further referenced in my Sherlock series, "Road to Home" specifically, "Frisson," (a bit) and "Signposts" (a bit more)--but not, funnily enough, "Boxers."


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